Apple’s new laptop, OS pack a powerful roar

It’s not just the iPad that makes Apple cool. The company’s Macintosh computer line gets fewer headlines, but the company sold nearly 16 million of them over the past year. They’re about to sell a whole lot more.

The new MacBook Air laptop computers, though pricey, are more elegant and powerful than ever. More significant is Apple’s latest operating system upgrade, nicknamed Lion. With a new iPad-like user interface that transcends old-fashioned mouse controls, Lion might be the biggest advance in user-friendly computing since the original Mac.

Hardware first: The new MacBook Air comes in 11-inch and 13-inch sizes, priced between $999 and $1,599 depending on screen size, processing power, and storage capacity. Apple loaned me the $1,299 model, a 13-incher with an Intel Core i5 processor, 4 gigabytes of random-access memory, and a 128-gigabyte slab of flash memory. Indeed, all Air models are flash-based, eliminating the need for fragile, noisy, slow hard drives.

The result is a stunningly fast laptop that shuts down in about two seconds and boots up in less than 25. Click an icon, any icon, and stuff just happens.

The Air has built-in Wi-Fi wireless networking, of course, but unlike most laptops, it has no Ethernet port. Instead, it features Thunderbolt, a new interface (codeveloped with Intel Corp.) that is supposed to move data far faster than today’s USB ports. For now, there are hardly any Thunderbolt-compatible devices available. But you can use Thunderbolt adapters to connect to standard Ethernet networks or desktop video monitors.

The MacBook Air lacks a DVD drive. If you must use a disk, there’s software that lets you use the optical drive on another network-connected computer. But Apple is betting that optical disks will fade away as laptop users download all their new software. That’s why Apple said that its stores will soon stop carrying boxed, disk-based versions of its own programs.

It’s already happened with Lion. There’s no disk version; instead, you download all 3.8 gigabytes of it from Apple’s online software store. Like previous Mac OS X upgrades, Lion sells for $29.99, a remarkable bargain.

I enjoyed using Lion on a mouse-equipped Mac workstation, but pleasure turned to delight once I tried it on the Air. The laptop features Apple’s excellent multitouch trackpad, which lets you use the same kinds of finger gestures that work on the iPhone and iPad: swiping, twisting, pinching, and the like. Lion takes full advantage of these commands, becoming the first desktop operating system smart enough to work like a smartphone.

How to install Lion on a new MacBook Air SSD (updated)

I just took delivery of a 13-inch MacBook Air i7 which will become my primary machine (more on that later) — but before I can migrate to my new iron, some planning is required.

Although I ordered my MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM and the 256 GB SSD (and won the Samsung lotto - woot!) that’s not nearly enough primary storage for me. I’m going to upgrade to a 480GB SSDfrom OWC now that they’ve been confirmed to work in the Mid-2011MacBook Air.

While saving up the $1400 (cough!) for the new SSD I got to thinking about how I’d actually install Lion onto a brand-new, blank SSD. Apple includes no recovery media with the new machines, instead relying on a recovery partition and Internet booting to bail you out should trouble arise.

I figured that I’d install the new SSD blade, then boot from the Internet and install Lion that way. As it turns out, there are actually two ways to install Lion on a new, blank SSD in the MacBook Air.

Method 1Use Lion’s Internet Recovery mode (via Apple knowledge base article#HT4718)

Note: If moving an OWC Aura Pro Express SSD used in a 2010 MacBook Air, using this method will completely erase the drive’s data. Make sure you have a Time Machine backup or clone of the OWC Aura Pro Express SSD on an external drive.

Method 2Use Lion’s Recovery HD mode:

1. Make SURE you have a Time Machine backup or clone of your data (from either the Apple factory stock flash drive or OWC Aura Pro Express SSD) on an external drive. We will refer to this drive as Drive #1.
2. Boot to the recovery partition on the stock drive by holding down Command R during a restart or boot process.
3. Use Disk Utility to do a restore on a separate external USB drive. DO NOT use the same external drive that was used for your Time Machine or clone backup. We will refer to this drive as Drive #2.
4. Replace the MacBook Air’s stock flash drive with the OWC Aura Pro Express SSD.
5. Boot to the USB Drive #2’s recovery partition.
6. Use Disk Utility to do a restore to the OWC Aura Pro Express SSD.
7. Restart or Boot to the OWC Aura Pro Express SSD.
8. Run Apple Migration Assistant to clone your data from Drive #1.

Update: The third (and perhaps simplest) option is to clone your original SSD to an external USB drive, then clone it back to the new replacement SSD. I use SuperDuper ($28) for this but the free Carbon Copy Cloneralso does the trick.

Are you going to upgrade the SSD in your MacBook Air?

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Macbook Air has a half-speed Thunderbolt port

EXPENSIVE TOY MAKER Apple put a Thunderbolt port into the latest model of its Macbook Air range, but it will only be capable of half the speed of Thunderbolt ports on other Apple devices.

The Light Ridge Thunderbolt chip used on this year's Imac, Macbook Pro and Mac Mini has four Thunderbolt channels, capable of up to 80Gbits/s of total bandwidth, along with two Displayports.

The Eagle Ridge Thunderbolt chip, on the other hand, has only half the channels and a single Displayport. This will be used by the Macbook Air, according to Anandtech, making for somewhat disappointing performance.

The problem for Apple is that it was a bit of a necessity in terms of price and space. The Eagle Ridge chip is much cheaper than Light Ridge, and it's also significantly smaller, coming in normal and small form factor versions. This made using it instead of the Light Ridge chip in the smaller and cheaper Macbook Air almost mandatory.

In terms of performance, 40Gbits/s bandwidth over two channels is still pretty decent. It will also support a single Thunderbolt display, rather than the two that a Light Ridge machine can handle, but it's unlikely that Macbook Air users are going to want to use two displays anyway, particularly when they come with such hefty price tags as Apple's Thunderbolt displays.

Thunderbolt is Apple's answer to next-generation connections. It boasts double the speed of USB 3.0 5Gbits/s bandwidth, along with two channels, effectively providing 20Gbits/s of bidirectional bandwidth.

At the moment not many devices support Thunderbolt. There's the Thunderbolt display, three storage devices, two video capture devices, and three adaptors. This limited range of peripherals is one of the problems that plague some other high-speed ports, including USB 3.0, and until it's addressed it will make one of the features of Apple's Macbook laptop range just that little bit less advanced. µ

An Expression Of Appreciation From Us To You!

I’ve never said this before, and it’s something worth saying: we have some of the toughest, sharpest, passionate, well-informed readers and comment posters on the web! You guys definitely help keep us honest and on top of our shit!

And I mean all of that! It’s tough enough to get others to actually read what one writes, let alone react to it with words. It’s even more appreciated when the reactions are often so rich, diverse, and challenging enough to give one reason to reconsider one’s stance.

We certainly don’t know everything, and every exchange here is an opportunity to learn something, regardless of what it is.

So, I just wanted to take the time to thank you all for your patronage, from those who’ve been around since day 1, to those just joining us. I don’t think we (not just us here on S&A, but human beings in general) express appreciation and gratitude enough; when we do, it’s sometimes too late.

DavMail POP/IMAP/SMTP/Caldav/Carddav/LDAP Exchange Gateway

DavMail POP/IMAP/SMTP/Caldav/Carddav/LDAP Exchange Gateway

Ever wanted to get rid of Outlook ? DavMail is a POP/IMAP/SMTP/Caldav/Carddav/LDAP exchange gateway allowing users to use any mail/calendar client (e.g. Thunderbird with Lightning or Apple iCal) with an Exchange server, even from the internet or behind a firewall through Outlook Web Access. DavMail now includes an LDAP gateway to Exchange global address book and user personal contacts to allow recipient address completion in mail compose window and full calendar support with attendees free/busy display.

DavMail also supports the CardDav protocol to sync address books. This new feature is sponsored by French Defense / DGA through project Trustedbird

The main goal of DavMail is to provide standard compliant protocols in front of proprietary Exchange. This means LDAP for globale address book, SMTP to send messages, IMAP to browse messages on the server in any folder, POP to retrieve inbox messages only, Caldav for calendar support and Carddav for personal contacts sync. Thus any standard compliant client can be used with Microsoft Exchange.

DavMail gateway is implemented in java and should run on any platform. Releases are tested on Windows, Linux (Ubuntu) and Mac OSX. Tested successfully with the Iphone (gateway running on a server).

Install OS X Lion

There's just no need to wait for Apple to become king of your online jungle. Photo by Masayuki Igawa/Flickr/CC

The optical disk is dead. Or at least it is for Apple fans. The company had been dropping DVD drives from its latest hardware and its new operating system, OS X 10.7 Lion, is now available in digital form only, via the Mac App Store.

On one hand that's great — upgrading is just a matter of clicking a button and you're done, everything is handled seamlessly behind the scenes.

However, the App Store method means you'll have to be running Snow Leopard (which is the only other OS that supports the App Store), and you'll have to download a nearly 4GB file, which can take quite a while if you haven't got a fast internet connection.

The other problem is that the App Store install doesn't offer the opportunity to do a "clean" install — that is, wipe away your old system and install a fresh copy of Lion. To do a clean install Apple would have you wait until August, when the company will be begin shipping Lion on USB sticks for a whopping $70, more the double the $30 App Store price.

However, despite what Apple says, there are in fact other ways to install Lion. Here's our guide to the various ways of installing Apple's newest OS on your Mac without waiting until August or paying double for the USB stick.

Contents  [hide] 1 Downloading Lion 2 Build your own install disk 3 Over-the-air "clean" install 4 Conclusion

Downloading Lion

The simplest way to install Lion is to download it from the Mac App Store and then run the installer. If your connection is too slow to make a 4 GB download practical, head to your nearest Apple Store which will allow you to download a copy via their speedy wifi connection. It'll still take a while, but at least you can play with fancy new Macs while you wait.

Don't have fast broadband or live near a Mac store? Make friends with someone who has the broadband you need, or be patient and wait several days for Lion to download. Alternately you can wait until August and pay a premium for a USB copy.

Build your own install disk

Just because Apple wants everything to be digital doesn't mean you have to oblige them. In fact it's dead simple to create your own DVD or USB Lion installer. When Lion installs it will create a hidden recovery partition on your harddrive. Should anything ever go wrong with your installation you can always hold down the option key at start up and boot from the emergency partition to re-install Lion.

Given the new hidden disk failsafe, why bother creating an installation disk? Well, you'll need it if you want to do a clean install and it's not a bad thing to have around. If your hard drive fails the hidden partition will fail with it and you'll be stuck downloading Lion again.

Fortunately creating an install disk from the Lion installer is pretty easy. First head to your Applications folder, where you'll see the freshly downloaded Lion installer app. Right-click on the app and select "Show Package Contents." That will open the installer bundle in a new window where you'll see a folder called "SharedSupport." Inside "SharedSupport" there's a disk image called "InstallESD.dmg." The "ESD" bit stands for "Emergency Startup Disk," which is what we'll use to create a new Lion install disk, so copy "InstallESD.dmg" somewhere else.

Now insert your disk — a DVD, a USB stick or an external hard drive will all work — and launch Disk Utility. Select the drive you're using and then click the "Restore" tab. Make sure your backup drive is set as the "Destination," and then just drag and drop the "InstallESD.dmg" into the "Source" box. Click "Restore" and wait for Disk Utility to work it's magic. Once it's done, eject your disk and you're finished. Use that disk as you would any other installation disk.

Over-the-air "clean" install

If something goes catastrophically wrong with your Mac, Apple has a new hidden option in Lion that will allow you to wipe your drive and do a clean install via the internet. That's great for recovery purposes, should something go wrong with your install.

To get to the new options, just start up your Mac holding down command-R and you'll be greeted by a menu that will allow you to restore your system to any point in time from a Time Machine backup, run Disk Utility to check, repair or partition disks and connect to Apple via Safari. That's the hidden recovery partition kicking in.

Lion's so-called Internet Recovery mode lets you start your Mac directly from Apple's Servers, as per Apple's tech note:

Note: If your Mac problem is a little less common — your hard drive has failed or you've installed a hard drive without OS X, for example — Internet Recovery takes over automatically. It downloads and starts Lion Recovery directly from Apple servers over a broadband Internet connection. And your Mac has access to the same Lion Recovery features online. Internet Recovery is built into every newly-released Mac starting with the Mac mini and MacBook Air.

Conclusion

As with in OS upgrade be sure to make complete bootable backups (and test them!) before you begin installing OS X Lion.

Help Configuring Exchange on Lion

Help Configuring Exchange on Lion


My girlfriend just purchased the recently released Air. I now want one. Not only will it be for personal use but I will be ditching my company issued Dell brick of shit. The problem is that I can't figure out how to get Exchange configured with the Mail.app. It configures on iOS perfectly. Not the case in Lion. I also tried configuring in Outlook 2011 with no luck.

After doing some research, I read that neither the Mail.app nor Outlook 2011 support Exchange Server 2003. My company is in the dark ages when it comes to hardware and software. More research turned up people suggesting to use DavMail. This software somehow allows support between Exchange and/or Outlook, Mail.app. I can't make heads or tails of any of it. I can't go to my IT group for help as they'd laugh at me. So I must go rogue.

I'm willing to make a decent PayPal donation to anyone that can help me to successfully get my Exchange account configured.

I have access to files on my company laptop and any information that Outlook will reveal but beyond that, I'm limited.